Public Disability History

By Ylva Söderfeldt The culture of sharing entertaining, brief videos on social media has in a short period of time introduced a number of genres never thought of before. The success of some, such as "unboxing" videos that let us share the experience of opening the package of desirable products, seem unexpected and bewildering at least to those of us who still remain in a 20th century mindset. The appeal of seeing cute animals, or people falling over, is perhaps more easily understandable, as they are connected to longer traditions in entertainment. Old or new, all of these genres however have an obvious common denominator: they are primarily meant to generate emotions. This is true also for the vast number of available videos and compilations showing the activation of cochlear implants (CI). Usually but not always featuring small children, these videos can easily be found by searching for "hearing for the first time". The conventions are remarkably strong for be

By Sebastian Barsch One of the possible ways to spread findings of disability history and reflections on disability in past and present is to teach them in history lessons in schools. Therefore, it could be useful to familiarize aspiring history teachers with the oppurtunities and challanges of disability history for historical thinking during their studies. In Germany, most people studying history on university level are going to be teachers later in their career. This post presents a selection of works by students in a seminar at Kiel University in summer term 2017. In total, the seminar was attended by 15 students. In terms of content, the students dealt with disability history on two levels: 1) as an independent scholarly exploration of a specific historical phenomenon and 2) with regard to the question how lesson material could be developed for history lessons in schools. Both levels are challenging. Among other things, because there is hardly any teaching material on disab